Thailand finished third in the AFC Women’s Futsal Championship 2018 when they beat Vietnam 3-2 on penalties in the classification match last night.
The score at the end of regulation was 0-0.
Thailand goalkeeper Pannipa Kamolrat was the eventual hero, saving Nguyen Thi Hue’s effort in the shootout, before Hataichanok Tappakun sealed victory with the decisive spot kick.
“You can see our players are very tired and we had to request for more staff to help the players recover. Thank you to the players for producing that effort despite how tired they were and being able to get third place, but our target was to be the champions, so I’d like to say sorry to our fans,” said Thailand head coach Udom Taveesuk.
“Over the whole tournament, I can’t say I’m happy about the result. After success at the SEA Games and Asian Indoor Games wins last year, I targeted the best for Thailand. We will learn from this and train to make our players better in the future. I must also improve tactically and teach the players to understand more. We can reach our targets if we do this. We will start a women’s futsal league in July, so hopefully that will help us develop and find more talent.”
“We knew that to play against the host nation would be very difficult but we showed a perfect game and I sympathise with our players even though we lost. Before this competition our target was for our players to get experience and have a good tournament. I will keep this squad for future tournaments. Our second set are all our young players and they have done really well here. Our goalkeeper, Ngo Nguyen Thuy Linh, has also done really well and this is her first time playing in such a tournament,” said Vietnam head coach Truong Quoc Tran.
